Why did God create the Universe?
Shalom everyone, This blog post is about the question, “Why did God create the Universe and the Earth”? Or put another way, “Why is there something as opposed to nothing, other than God?” My gut-feeling is that the answer to this question is ultimately known...
The Passover Seder: Participating in Israel’s Birth
(message put out to the group Thurs 6th Apr 2023) Shalom everyone, This evening, we hold our Seders, when we remember the story of the Exodus. One of the purposes of retelling the story, is to enable us to feel as if we came out of Egypt ourselves. This aspect of the...
The oft-forgotten purpose of remembering the Exodus
Shalom everyone, We all know that each religious festival has themes, and that there is a purpose to having those festival themes: that by celebrating these festivals together, God has the opportunity to shape and mould us into the kind of people that God intended us...
An Overview of the HEBT Translation of the Torah
A Harmonisation of the Four surviving versions of the Torah The fruits of a twenty-year project are now available for you to purchase online – the HEBT Translation of the Torah (HEBT stands for, ‘Harmonised and Expanded Bible Translation’). It is a completely new...
Why did God allow the Suffering of the Israelites in Egypt?
Shalom everyone, We are so used to the story of the Exodus, that there are some very obvious questions we no longer think about. A while back, a good friend wrote and asked me: … since God, being omniscient, knew that the presence of the Hebrews in Egypt would lead to...
Ghosts, Spirits, and why a faithful Yahwist should not consult the Dead
Shalom everyone, Last year, I received several questions about ghosts, and why a Yahwist is forbidden to summon or speak to the dead. From what I recall, the questions were prompted by seeing people on TV – mediums – who claimed to be able to speak to the spirits of...
Problems with the ‘Book of Enoch’
Shalom everyone, During the 1990s, when I was doing research for The Exhortations, a few people wanted me to include the Book of Enoch. However, after having fully read its contents from cover to cover, digested its beliefs, and researched its origins, I ended up...
Was Yeshua a Pharisee?
Modern Misconceptions about ancient Jewish denominations Because most modern people formally belong to one sect, church or denomination, most Christians think that Yeshua must have belonged to one of the 4 sects mentioned by Josephus: either an Essene, a...
The Four meanings of ‘The Kingdom of God’
Introduction Biblical Hebrew and ancient Jewish Aramaic had a small vocabulary compared to modern languages, and so one word often had to cover several meanings, when in English, for example, we would use different words in each case. Such a word is the Aramaic...
Some thoughts for Yom Shmini ha-Atséret (Eighth Day of Closed Assembly)
Shalom everyone, On the other days of the week during Sukkot, we asked for blessings upon all the Peoples and Nations of the earth; today, now that the sukkah is down, we pray for our needs as Yahwists, and for the needs of Israel, and we take a look at what it means...